DevCSI | Developer Community Supporting Innovation2013-01-11T16:06:31Zhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/feed/atom/WordPresskpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=48802012-11-05T18:26:48Z2012-11-05T18:26:48ZMax Hammond opened the Future Citation Data Hack by emphasising that, rightly or wrongly, citations are the fundamental currency for measuring the impact of research. He approached DevCSI to run a hack event exploring the practical applications of citation data to help inform the JISC Citation Data Directions project he is conducting, which will examine [...]]]>

“What use is citation data without context?”

Max Hammond opened the Future Citation Data Hack by emphasising that, rightly or wrongly, citations are the fundamental currency for measuring the impact of research. He approached DevCSI to run a hack event exploring the practical applications of citation data to help inform the JISC Citation Data Directions project he is conducting, which will examine the whole lifecycle of citation data.
Hammond observed that whilst he is particularly interested in the citation data creation process, understanding the end use of that data is crucial to inform more strategic decisions.

The event was designed to support this work by bringing together a group of domain experts, users and developers to explore ideas related to potential real world uses of citation data and to prototype potential solutions. In particular, Hammond challenged the group to consider: Are there new ideas for the intelligence use of citation data? Are there things we can do with this data beyond the obvious?

With these questions in mind, the participants were invited to map out some of the issues and identify the most useful developments they could work on together during the hack event.

Initial Discussions

The group began with a round table brainstorm of the issues that exist in this space, and identified some of the specific questions members of the group were keen to explore in more detail.

Points of note included:

Acquiring complete citation data is an issue. Publishers see the citation data as their value-added thing, which makes them reticent to give it away.

Grey literature and questions over what constitutes a citation means that, in practice, it is impossible to have all citation data, so you will only ever have a sparse network. Under these circumstances, what can you do with only part of the data?

In different fields people cite in different ways. For example, applied research results in low citations. The completeness of the record depends on the field.

One of the key areas of interest was the potential practical uses of citation data, and identifying who the users might be. Within this initial discussion, members of the group who considered themselves to be users of citation data shared their ideas for potential use scenarios, including:

Some form of rating for different types of citations to help judge impact. There is working going on in this area currently, but the group noted that this would require researchers to apply it rigorously in practice.

A Klout-style system for citations: This would need to assess positive and negative citations to provide a useful single-number score per article. However, the group discussion highlighted that the issue of betweenness – where really valuable citations can be in between traditional boundaries in less typically valued places. This would be hard to address in a single score.

A geographical visualisation of citations as a broad way to explore citation data. The group imagined a visualisation of citations across a world map, connecting global citations with funder information to allow users to explore impact. Further discussion of this idea highlighted that the current incompleteness of the data – including a lack of funder information and data about non-English citations – would be a major stumbling block to gaining an accurate picture in such a visualisation. The group discussed possible routes to remedy this situation, including how to encourage authors to include funding information, which is often omitted.

The discussion then moved towards identifying practical, achievable outcomes for this event, such as:

A comparison of several available citation datasets to identify similarities and establish if researchers working in this area may end up with different results when using graphs from different citation datasets. The published material suggests citation datasets from different sources may be very different, which is by academics claim citations are not a good way to judge them. Could this be verified or explored more deeply using the datasets provided by event participants?

A mind map of the wider picture of citation, including how information and money flow around the citation system. A collaborative page was made available throughout for individual contributions to this big picture.

Experiments with visualisation tools to create citation timelines and measure the decay of citations over time.

There was also interest in taking the opportunity to discuss a number of higher level issues, which could inform the practical use of citation data. Some of the issues touched upon included:

Identifying the barriers to data mining to establish the wider picture around citations.

Questions surrounding the fundamental nature of citations, such as: What is a citation? What would we do differently if we could define this? If we decided that citations are not the best measure of quality, what is?

Which is most valuable: the most-read but least cited paper, or the least-read but most cited paper?

After these initial discussions, the participants split into several groups to pursue these ideas further, with several participants floating between groups to offer ideas and expertise where required.

Discussion Group

Throughout the first day of the event, a wide ranging discussion between various participants explored the more abstract issues associated with citation data – including questions relating to the nature of citation – specifically focusing on data citation and the intrinsic link between the nature of citation and the nature of the material being cited.

The key argument made was that data citation is still very much domain specific, with disciplines having different approaches to making the underlying data available (and therefore citable), or even preserving the data at all, depending on a number of practical and cultural considerations. Members of the group discussed the citation of less conventional materials, such as plant materials or animals in Life Sciences, which rely on a single physical “master” specimen. This discussion highlighted the fact that data isn’t just digits, and citation of data will vary hugely across different disciplines depending on the form of the data being cited. The group also explored examples from archaeology, where convention dictates that a site report is cited in place of an object itself, and questioned whether metadata could be cited in place of the data in other contexts too.

In considering the issue of how you cite differing materials, the question of persistence arose, which led to an extended discussion about data preservation and the need for persistent citations, but again, it was argued that this is largely domain specific. One of the major problems they identified was that of people thinking of the URL as an identifier, even though these offer no persistence.

The discussion wrapped up with reflections about the reason for the current differentiation between data and documents, questioning why the two things are treated differently. They concluded that the understanding of what constitutes a citation in relation to a publication is not really clearly understood and may be influenced by a number of cultural and social factors, making it difficult to apply to data. To be truly understood and assigned a value, a citation needs to be considered in context.

Comparing Large Citation Datasets

Karl Ward, CrossRef
Petr Knoth, Open University
Emma Tonkin, UKOLN
David King, Open University
Sheng Li, University of Birmingham

Two members of this group brought significant citation datasets with them to the event, and there was considerable interest in comparing them to identify similarities. The datasets differed in size and composition, so the group summised that if they resulted in similar but differently sized graphs, this would allow people looking a smaller graphs to make general conclusions about their own data with more confidence. To test this, the group created a series of histograms of citations over time to identify general shapes. These could perhaps be compared against specific resources to identify features such as courtesy citations compared to the general shape of citations over time for generally relied-upon resources.

The two datasets came from the CORE project and CrossRef. Both datasets have different identifiers, so the group had to manually choosing papers that appear in both datasets to start with to enable them to make comparisons. The group also used data from Microsoft Academic Research to support their work. Through further discussion both within the group and with other event participants, they identified a list of statistical techniques and graph-based approaches that they could apply to this data, including calculating the half-life of a paper. However, they stressed the need for a statistician to become involved with the project to assist with many of these analyses.

Karl Ward described their progress and ultimate aims in this short video interview:

By the end of the event, the group had explored some overall metrics to help assess the similarities between the datasets to help researchers better understand the decisions they are making by choosing to use one citation dataset over another without fully understanding the different methodologies that may have been used in compiling either dataset. These metrics included the absolute maximum number of citations that a single node might have received, absolute minimum, average and so on. However, they noted that whilst this tells you a bit about your dataset as a whole, but does not tell you how accurate any given node might be.

To pursue this further, the group picked some specific nodes to study in greater detail, creating histograms of citations over time and considering some of the odd features of some of the data – including a bias towards the present in the CrossRef data. They speculated that this might be due to publishers only recently adding DOIs to papers, enabling them to confidently describe a paper containing a citation, but conceded that this issue needs to be examined in more detail than permitted in the time available at the hack event.

Once these anomalous results had been discounted until they can be fully explained, the group used the Earth Mover’s Distance algorithm to examine the differences between normalised results for one node, comparing the same paper in the data provided by CrossRef and Microsoft Academic Research. They noted that they will need to carry out this same process over a larger group of papers, for which they will need to be able to identify the same papers within both datasets using DOIs.

Going forward, the group would like to look at the general shape of more histograms and how different papers are used over time, and to identify papers that are in the space where they were almost influential, but might not appear in a rank of frequencies.

Watch the final report by Emma Tonkin, who summarises the outcomes of the group’s efforts in full in this presentation:

Information Flow

Throughout the event, Max Hammond asked participants to contribute to a collaborative project to map out the flow of information and money within the citation data ecosystem. Various participants chipped in to add sections of the citation data lifecycle, and the influences and issues that impact on that lifecycle.

Visualisation Beyond the Citation Border

Edward Minnett, Faculty of 1000
Tanya Gray, University of Oxford
Sheng Li, University of Birmingham
Tim Brody, University of Southampton
Paul Stokes, JISC

This group were particularly interested in creating visualisations of citation data, including visualisations over time and over geographical space. Their initial approach involved attempting to make modifications to an existing library in order to create tree graphs, but they quickly found this too complicated for the time constraints of the event. As a result, they decided to take a stock visualisation and change some of the parameters to make it more readable for citations, then plug in some of the data from opencitations.net to see what patterns emerged.

Several members of the group took the opportunity to explore new or unfamiliar technologies, including Node.js, which Tim Brody used for the first time at the event to develop a proxy around opencitations.net to act as middleware, which could then be applied to other datasets. Other members of the group practiced using sparql queries to create a dynamic graph around the opencitations.net data.

Edward Minnett described the group’s progress and driving forces from his perspective in this short video interview:

By the end of the event, the group had developed a middleware layer that can extract the APIs from a variety of citation data sources to allow that data to be used with any visualisation tool. In the future, this could be coupled with a system like DOI to allow you to migrate seamlessly across citation databases within a visualisation.

The approach the group took to build this was to construct a node.js based server, which sends off sparql queries to opencitations.net to retrieve metadata about a particular article and all the items that article has been cited by. This is built into a standard format in the middleware, which in turn is passed to the chosen visualisation system.

As part of this work, the group wanted to come up with a new visualisation that would help people in this space to think about citations on a timeline. They created a visualisation which connects articles cited by a particular node, and the articles that in turn cited that node, arranged on a timeline. They used the JavaScript InfoVis toolkit to create and demonstrate this visualisation in real time.

Watch the final report by Tim Brody, who summarises the outcomes of the group’s efforts in full in this presentation:

Remote Participation

There was interest in the event from a number of people who were unable to attend in person. When Jimme Jardine realised he could not attend, he asked us to show a pre-prepared video to the group describing Qiqqa, his own project that was highly relevant to the discussions taking place at the event.

Conclusions

The event was designed to directly feed into a JISC-funded project examining the life cycle of citation data by connecting the researchers directly to users and developers who can build things with citation data. The practical outcomes of the event as described in this report helped to provide insight into how citation data could be used and to identify some of the difficulties that exist with the current citation data infrastructure that prevent innovation.

Max Hammond summed up how useful the event proved for his project in this short video interview, in which he reflects how on the differences between the needs of high level stakeholders and the developers on the ground who are looking to implement solutions based on citation data:

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=44832012-07-12T10:57:14Z2012-07-12T10:55:19Z After much deliberation, the winners of the DevCSI Open Repositories 2012 Developer Challenge have been decided… Winner Patrick McSweeney, University of Southampton Idea: Data Engine McSweeney’s idea involves a set of tools which turn a repository into a data management and visualisation suite with [...]]]>

Winner

Idea:

Data Engine

McSweeney’s idea involves a set of tools which turn a repository into a data management and visualisation suite with a simple provenence model.

The suite would provide conversion tools to convert scientific data from lab equipment into CSV. CSV can be loaded into a temporary database where querys can be run through a web front end to create derived CSVs from existing data. The repository would catalog how files were derived from source data and what queries were used to do this. CSV can then be visualised in the suite using a range of visualisation tools, including D3 JS. He demonstrated a number of these visualisations in his pitch.

Judges Comments:

This was new and cool, and sits along side a number of other efforts in this area, so the judges hope to see this developed further along with some standards.

Runner Up/Microsoft Challenge

Keith Gilbertson and Linda Newman

Idea:

MATS: Mobile Audio Transcription and Submission?

Gilbertson’s original idea involved an electronic device to be used by historians, archivists, and others who work with audio transcripts. The device would record an audio file, and then deposit it into a repository, where it is automatically transcribed. After speaking with other developers, the idea was refined to extend last year’s SWORD mobile phone app. Users will be able to choose between Microsoft Research MAVIS and Amazon Mechanical Turk Transcription to automatically transcribe the audio recording.

Judges Comments:

This entry not only showed something of general repository community, it also embodied a lot of what we wanted to see around the challenge. They came with an idea, talked to other developers to flesh it out and then presented it. The idea also made the best use of a Microsoft technology, so it won the Microsoft Challenge prize of a .Net Gadgeteer kit.

Honourable Mention

Mark MacGillivray and Richard Jones, Cottage Labs

Idea:

Getting Academics Closer to Repositories

MacGillivray and Jones proposed a javascript widget that can be easily embedded by an academic on their own web pages that automatically tracks their submissions to their repo, and provides useful statistics whilst also linking out to other cool sources of information. They demonstrated the basics of this, and described how they would develop this further.

Mark gave us a quick video interview describing the idea in more detail…

Honourable Mention

Ben O’Steen and Cameron Neylon, Cottage Labs and Science and Technology Facilities Council

Idea:

Is this research readable?

We spend a lot of time arguing over whether people have access, should have access, would have access if they knew how to get it. Why don’t we actually just find out whether people really do have access to the published literature from where they sit when they’re doing their work? O’Steen and Neylon have designed a survey in which we functionally check whether a human being thinks they have access to a given work we can look at how access, and its lack, effects the daily work of people interested in research. This will provide a dataset on access that can be used to support policy development and further technical work.

Featured image by Adam Field

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=44852012-07-12T10:22:01Z2012-07-12T08:51:25ZAfter two days of coding, reflecting and cogitating, entrants to the DevCSI Open Repositories 2012 Developer Challenge presented their final pitches in front of our panel of judges and an enthusiastic audience yesterday evening.

Redundancy at the File and Network Level to Protect Data by Jimmy Tang

Fedora Object Locking by Asger Askov Blekinge

Shield by Graham Trigg

Machine and User-Friendly “Policy-fying” by Jose Martin

Linking CRISes to Research Discovery by Steffen Godskesen, Rikke Willer and Christian Tonsberg

Repository Analytics by Petr Knoth*

Visualising Repositories in the Real World by Julie Allison and Ben O’Steen

A Thing of Dreams: A Time Machine by Dave Tarrant

Is this research readable? by Cameron Neylon and Ben O’Steen

* = Not included in video footage at speaker’s request

A big thank you to all of those who entered the challenge this year, and to those who helped the developers to refine their ideas throughout the event.

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=44342012-07-10T10:44:25Z2012-07-11T10:00:40Z We’ve received some really exciting entries to this year’s Open Repositories Developer Challenge, and we are very much looking forward to hearing the entrants pitch to our panel of judges at 5pm on Wednesday 11th July. If you are pitching an idea, here are a ten top tips to help you impress the judges: [...]]]>

We’ve received some really exciting entries to this year’s Open Repositories Developer Challenge, and we are very much looking forward to hearing the entrants pitch to our panel of judges at 5pm on Wednesday 11th July.

If you are pitching an idea, here are a ten top tips to help you impress the judges:

1. Focus 100% on who you are talking to, their interests and their technical level.

2. What does your project do to change your core audience’s lives for the better? In marketing terms: what is your ‘unique selling point’? This is your core message – so stick to it!

3. Write down key points within your core message, and keep them short, snappy, simple but not stupid.

4. Avoid jargon! It is almost always a barrier to your audience’s understanding.

5. Be confident and believe fully in what you are saying.

6. Practice, practice, practice!

7. Don’t use distracting gimmicks.

8. Look at the camera as if you were looking at someone in the eyes.

9. Speak clearly, check your audience can hear you if it is a large room and pause to take a breath if you feel yourself beginning to speak too quickly or jabber.

10. Test it on a stranger and address any weak points in your delivery.

Remember, the Developer Lounge is available for you to practice in front of an audience or to get advice from the organisers and judges.

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=44742012-07-11T09:51:41Z2012-07-11T09:51:41ZRob Sanderson from Los Alamos National Laboratories, is offering a bonus challenge to any developer who wishes to take up his idea and develop a solution.

If you can successfully solve the problem, you would be invited to the face-to-face meeting for W3 Community Group in September. Some travel funding will be made available for this.

Rob’s problem is as follows…

As Cameron Neylon said in his opening keynote, annotation enhances the network for research. Annotations create links between resources, and at the same time can provide post-publication peer review to enable demand-side filtering. The difficulty is for this to be implemented in a distributed and interoperable fashion. Enter the W3C community group on Open Annotation.

The challenge idea is to implement the Open Annotation model specifically for post-publication peer review of research outputs on an appropriate collection, such as the PLoS journals. Come find me if you’d like to contribute, some code already exists as a head start!

If you’re interested in developing a solution for this challenge, contact Rob Sanderson by email or tweet @azaroth42.
]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=44532012-07-11T09:24:42Z2012-07-11T09:25:52Z We’ve received a record number of ideas for this year’s DevCSI Open Repositories Developer Challenge. Over the next seven and a half hours, the entrants will be working on their ideas to refine them, and in some cases write the code to start making their ideas a reality. If you have a red, [...]]]>

We’ve received a record number of ideas for this year’s DevCSI Open Repositories Developer Challenge. Over the next seven and a half hours, the entrants will be working on their ideas to refine them, and in some cases write the code to start making their ideas a reality.

If you have a red, yellow or green dot on your badge, pop up to the Developer Lounge to chat to the developers to listen to their ideas and to give them some feedback and encouragement.

Judgement Time

At 5pm today everyone is invited to hear the challenge entrants pitch their ideas in front of our panel of judges.

There will beer. And nibbles.

In return, we want YOU to vote for your favourite pitch. Your votes will be taken into account by the judges when calculating the final scores for each pitch. The winners will be announced at the conference dinner later this evening.

So, come along to Lecture Theatre 4 to hear what’s new and cool in the world of Open Repositories.

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=44642012-07-11T08:49:25Z2012-07-11T08:49:25ZOur OR2012 Developer Challenge attracted a number of interesting ideas and suggestions for developers to take forward.

Entries for the Developer Challenge have now closed, but if you are a developer and you’re looking for ideas to solve that would make the world of open repositories a better place, here are a few for you to chew over…

Idea 1

Could we have a widget/dashboard for an EPrints repository [which may be part of MePrints or a wholly separate plugin] which could pull together information for an author/depositor about their publications profile in the repository, ideally visually (graph?) so for instance the total number of papers, the percentage of particular types of paper, a breakdown by year, an indication of the other parts of the institution they co-author the most with. It could also pull together available information such as access and full text/downloads (or identify where there are full text gaps) as well as citation data. Much of this data already exists but being able to unify it and visually display would be very useful/interesting for authors.

Contact

Idea 2

In the light of the Finch Report, could a developer build a mechanism whereby a deposit into a repository triggers a workflow for submitting and paying for Gold OA. In other words, bringing the repository into the Gold OA process and adding value to this.

Contact

Idea 3

Could a developer pick up on William’s dashboard idea, but apply this to data, such that a display presents information on what data is stored, where it is stored (local, off-site, cloud, etc.) and relevant tasks/workflow steps required to guide ongoing management.

Contact

Idea 4

Could a developer produce a widget to give users the code to more easily embed an object (image, pdf, audio or video — would have to be a recognized file format or mime type) in their own web page? Give the user options for including limited metadata in that embedded view?

Contact

Linda Newman

Idea 5

What might be possible to support a ‘drag and drop’ interface from a researcher’s desktop to our repositories? (This idea may not be completely new, but possibly worth re-visiting with current tools?)

Contact

Linda Newman

Idea 6

Can a developer come up with a way that a digital repository can easily ingest a copy of a particular version of a piece of software that is stored in a public code repository (e.g. GitHub, SourceForge), in such a way that common metadata like copyright owner, license, contributors, and dependencies are correctly recorded.

Contact

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=43952012-07-17T14:38:22Z2012-07-10T11:56:43ZSo, you’ve submitted your idea to the DevCSI OR2012 Developer Challenge and now you’re nervous about who you will be judging when you pitch it at 5pm tomorrow (Wednesday 11th July).

Here’s a quick introduction to our panel of expert judges…

Peter Sefton

Peter Sefton has ten year’s experience in senior roles in and around Higher Education and research on systems, policy and change management to support research and learning. He is plugged into networks of practitioners, theorists and developers in a broad range of scholarly technologies including institutional repositories, web publishing and research data management. He also has experience leading software development and his own technical skills include document processing in JavaScript / JQuery, PHP, Python, XML, XSLT, Java and C#.

Joss Winn

Joss Winn is a Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Educational Research and Development at the University of Lincoln, where he co-ordinates the work of LNCD, a cross-university group interested in technology for education, and manages a number of research and development projects. Previously, he held posts as Audiovisual Archivist at Amnesty International, Project Manager for Amnesty’s Digital Asset Management system and worked in Collections Management as Moving Image Archivist at the BFI National Film and Television Archive.

Bill Anderson

Bill Anderson has worked at the Georgia Tech Library for five years as either a Digital Library Developer, a Software Engineer, or a Systems Analyst, depending on who’s in charge of Human Resources at any given time. This is his fifth Open Repositories conference. In the past, he has worked in various IT-related capacities at Duke University, Nando Media, and Intercontinental Hotels, where he was briefly in charge of Holly the Holiday Inn Robot. Participants interested in bribing Mr. Anderson would do well to keep in mind his deep love of single malt whisky.

Balviar Notay

Ben Ryan

Dr. Ben Ryan joined Jorum as the Technical Development Manager early in 2012, coming from the University of Leeds. With a Ph.D. in Computer Science, he’s worked as a Software Developer and consultant for a specialised typesetting and printing company, focusing on automated workflows for the production of printed and online academic journals an Ed tech working on LOM metadata, learning objects and specifications relating to electronic learning production and delivery; a technical director of a company developing delivery systems for online learning, as well as a Technical Officer for an ESRC funded qualitative longitudinal social science project responsible for achiving social science data. Ben is also an allotmenteer, fungalist, pizza oven pimper and specialist in building Heath Robinson style greenhouses.

Adam Soroka

Adam Soroka is a senior engineer at the University of Virginia Library, where he has been working with repository technologies since the turn of the century. He is a Fedora Commons committer and has presented on Fedora systems design, geospatial data repositories, and digital humanities work at conferences such as OR, DLF, Digital Humanities, and Code4lib. He is particularly excited about this years’ OR theme and eager to see DevCSI Developer Challenge entries that address it.

Alex Wade

Alex Wade is Director for Scholarly Communication at Microsoft Research, where he oversees a portfolio of research-focused products and services. Alex holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from U.C. Berkeley, and a Masters of Librarianship degree from the University of Washington. During his career at Microsoft, Alex has managed the corporate search and taxonomy management services; has shipped a SharePoint-based document and workflow management solution for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance; and served as Senior Program Manager for Windows Search. Prior to joining Microsoft, Alex was Systems Librarian at the University of Washington, and held technical library positions at the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley.

Sarah Shreeves

Sarah Shreeves is currently the Coordinator for the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS), a set of services and collections supporting scholarly communication (including the institutional repository) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also the co-Coordinator for the Scholarly Commons, a space for expert, interdisciplinary research support services and open workshops for faculty and graduate students to develop skills in areas such as digital content creation, e-learning and teaching, working with digital repositories, curation of research data, understanding copyright issues and author rights, and working with geospatial and numeric data.

We’ll be interviewing our judges throughout the event to find out more about them and what they are hoping to see from entries to the developer challenge, so watch out for further posts.

If you haven’t entered the challenge yet but have a great idea, get across to our ideas page and get your entry in quick. Once you have entered an idea, you are free to refine it and practice your pitch with others in the Developer Lounge on the mezzanine level of the Appleton Tower.

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=43912012-07-10T08:01:57Z2012-07-10T08:01:57ZThinking about entering the DevCSI Open Repositories Challenge?

Wondering what we’re looking for?

We can exclusively reveal our judging criteria to help you craft your idea throughout the day!

We will be looking for evidence of…

Innovation

Vision

Relevance to user problems

Coolness

Usability

Plausibility for adoption/technical implementation

Functionality

Overall fit to the challenge

Audience vote

Once you have entered your initial idea, you are free to refine and craft it as much as you want before pitching it in front of our judges. You can work on your idea in our Developer Lounge, where you can practice pitching it in front of others and get advice from our judging team to make your idea even better.

Remember, the deadline for entries has been extended to 4pm TODAY (10th July) so you need to get your initial idea up on our ideas page pretty quick.

]]>0kpitkinhttp://eventamplifier.wordpress.comhttp://devcsi.ukoln.ac.uk/?p=43182012-07-05T09:27:13Z2012-07-06T09:20:38ZYou have probably heard about our DevCSI Open Repositories 2012 Developer Challenge but that’s not the only thing we will be getting up to at Open Repositories 2012 next week… The Developer Workspace If you are attending OR12 and are part of the Developer Challenge, why not enjoy the specially prepared ‘Developer Workspace’ [...]]]>

You have probably heard about our DevCSI Open Repositories 2012 Developer Challenge but that’s not the only thing we will be getting up to at Open Repositories 2012 next week…

The Developer Workspace

If you are attending OR12 and are part of the Developer Challenge, why not enjoy the specially prepared ‘Developer Workspace’ which is comfortable, has good wireless and power to help you develop your winning entry at the conference.

We are organising some presentations from previous winners in this room, and there will be opportunities to speak to judges and previous prize winners who can give feedback about your entries. Also there will be time to practice your ‘pitch’ to others.

The “Developer Workspace” will be on the first floor of the Appleton Tower, so just follow the signs. The room will be available from Tuesday 10th July to Thursday 12th July 2012. The Developer Workspace will open at 10am each day.

The lounge is intended to support those who are entering the challenge. You can treat this place as your ‘base’ for the event and you can use it as a chance to talk to other developers, exchange ideas, talk tech, get advice etc. The room will have flip charts, a projector, wireless, lots of power sockets, a pitching area, video cameras, etc. Basically, it will be designed for geeks! There is an adjoining room where you will be able to get coffee, snacks and refreshments.

The workspace is a ‘flexible’ space, so you are encouraged to attend other exciting parts of the conference if you so wish and even promote your entry to other delegates whilst you are out and about.

Server Space

NeCTAR is partnering with Australian institutions and research organisations to create, for the first time, a national research cloud for Australian researchers. They are kindly offering server space for Developers wanting to work on challenges for Open Repositories 12. Please let us know if you require server space.

The DevCSI OR 2012 Developer Challenge

If you haven’t entered our Developer Challenge yet, make sure you get your idea to us before Tuesday 10th July. See our Developer Challenge page for full details of how to get involved.